I finally sorted through our pictures from the Branson / Eureka Springs trip we took a couple of weekends ago and added the good ones to my site. When I first posted about our trip I forgot to mention our pit stop at the Fantastic Caverns on the way down. The fact that I forgot about it does not mean that these caves aren’t worth seeing. I though it was well worth the price we paid to take a ride through.

Even though I didn’t really care for Branson itself, that doesn’t mean that I didn’t enjoy the surrounding area. I really enjoyed the little bit of time we spent around Table Rock Lake. The water here was so clean and clear that if it wasn’t cold I might have jumped right in. In addition, the view from up on some of the nearby hills and mountains was amazing. In fact the views from our entire drive through lower Missouri and northern Arkansas were all very scenic.

And who could forget our time spent in Eureka Springs, complete with Victorian era buildings and giant statues of Jesus. Be sure to check out all of the pictures from our trip, there are some really good ones.

In addition to these pictures, I also added some pictures from the Plaza Lights ceremony and the subsequent party at our friend Todd’s apartment. It was the first time that Kim and I went down for the actual ceremony and braved the large crowd of thousands. I’d say it was worth doing, at least once, if only for the fireworks display. The lights are often better viewed from higher up than street level. Thankfully Todd’s apartment sits right above the plaza.

Throughout my travels and events of the weekend I was able to catch a little football action on TV. Between my cousin’s wedding and the reception we caught the end of the Bearcats game with UConn. Although the Cats were behind the entire game, they came out on top when it mattered and beat the Huskies 26-23. This solidified the fact that they would once again be playing in a bowl game. They finished the season 7-5 even with the second toughest schedule in the nation. I think they should get a rematch with OSU. :)

Just as things were looking positive for UC, I learned today that head football coach Mark Dantonio would be leaving to take a job at Michigan State. His career will be ending after just three short seasons. As my dad said to me earlier today, “it sucks to be a UC fan.” We can still hope that they pull out a bowl win and take this winning streak into next season.

Before my flight back to Kansas City yesterday I was able to listen to the first half of the Bengals and Browns game. The game helped pass the time on the drive from Cincinnati to Indianapolis. By the time I arrived at the airport, the Bengals had built up a good sized lead and had me fairly confident of a victory while I was on my flight. Upon landing in Kansas City I found out about the shutout victory and had to stop myself from calling my buddy Mike, who was at the game cheering for the Browns, to rub it in.

We spent our Thanksgiving at home preparing an excellent dinner for ourselves. The highlight was the turkey breast that I put on the smoker for a few hours. The meat turned out delicious. The rest of our meal was of the add water and stir variety but it was still very good. I hope everyone else had a great dinner as well. Happy Thanksgiving!

I discovered a new website the other day, BarDiver.com. The goal of the site is to help you find good bars in your area based on the features you enjoy. The site is completely user driven so anyone can enter a bar on the site and then tag it with the features they enjoy. There are only 48 bars listed currently, but I’m excited to see what that number will be after I make the move to Denver. I even found the Bannock Street Garage on the site already, which is a bar that a friend of Phil and Doni started. While they are concentrating on Colorado (Denver to be specific) it sounds like they have plans to expand in the future.

I love the fact that I’m already half way through this work week. Isn’t Thanksgiving the greatest?

In other good news, someone placed an offer for our house already! We received word of this on Sunday morning just before our open house. The open house went on as scheduled, although there weren’t any visitors. This was blamed mostly on the Chiefs game which was at the same time, but we are a little skeptical of the amount of advertising used. We did have three more groups come through for showings yesterday, bringing the grand total to nearly twenty. Perhaps we can get a bidding war going, wouldn’t that be nice? The house has been on the market for less than three weeks so I think we are way ahead of schedule. We really need to find a house in Denver now.

My weekend can pretty much be summed up in one word, football. Bright and early Saturday morning I went down to the Old Chicago in Overland Park, Kansas. My buddy Mike had often told me that this was the Ohio State bar of Kansas City. He was right, we arrived just after 11 and there was already a decent crowd at the bar waiting for the Ohio State and Michigan game to start. A note to those who didn’t watch the game, it started at 2:30! It was a blast watching the Ohio State victory surrounded by a couple hundred fans both young and old.

Later in the evening the University of Cincinnati took on previously undefeated Rutgers. Luckily the game was broadcasted on ESPN, so I could watch most of it while attending a dinner party. Not only did the Bearcats beat the Scarlet Knights, they did it pretty easily with a final score of 30-11. Check out my mom’s pictures from the game. Go Cats!

The only thing that could top off this weekend would be a Bengals victory. Fortunately I watched one of those as well, as Cincy took out New Orleans yesterday 31-16! Finally the Bengals are back to winning and Chad Johnson is back to scorings lots of touchdowns. It was a good weekend in sports!

Last night Kim and I headed to Jack Stack for dinner. We wanted to check out the newly opened location on the plaza, but our gift certificates from the Kansas City Marathon were only good for the Freight House District location. Either way the food was going to be great, especially when it comes for free.

I chose the Arkansas Topper, chicken breast topped with choice of barbecue meat, BBQ sauce and cheeses. Kim picked the Painted Chicken Kabob which is covered in southwestern sauce along with melted cheddar and jack cheeses. If you didn’t already know, we are big fans of chicken. Both entrees were excellent and I would recommend either.

Last night I attended a singer songwriter round table hosted by Barclay Martin at bar Natasha. This event consisted of four individuals taking turns playing their own music one song at a time. I was primarily there to see Tanner Walle perform who has been out on the road for the last month with Sarah Blacker, who was also one of the performing artists. The final performer was a piano player named Casey Matthews (I cannot find a website for him).

In theory the format of taking turns playing songs sounds like a good idea, but that’s where it ends. Even though the performers appeared to enjoy each others songs, I’m sure it was awkward for them to be sitting on stage doing nothing, waiting for the other three to play their songs. I thought that this would be a refreshing way to hear a variety of performers and songs, but I actually found it hard to get into any of their performances. Once they would build up my interest, their turn to play would be over and then you have to attempt the same thing again with one of the other performers. If they do this again, I hope they find a better format to use.

Now that we’ve taken a couple of days to forget about the move, it’s time for us to get right back to it. Kim is currently in Denver for the week and has looked through some more places. Again she’s seen lots that would not work for us and fortunately a few that have some potential of being the one. Maybe by the end of the month we’ll have something picked out, or at least a much smaller list.

As you can tell we’ve been touring lots of places, 30+ so far. To keep track of everything we have been using an Excel spreadsheet to list all of the important details and also our comments. I’ve even gone as far as color coding it for the ones we like (green) down to the ones we dislike (red). This was working great for us minus the fact that we had to send it back and forth in email each time we changed anything.

Today I decided that this had to stop and I finally checked out Google Docs & Spreadsheets. First of all, they made it very easy to import an existing document and just about all of the formatting transferred over perfectly. With just a few more clicks the document was saved online and was shared between myself and Kim. The online storage is great because we can access it anywhere we have an internet connection, so we no longer have to email it back and forth. This also allows us to edit it very easily and immediately save it in one central location. I’m loving it so far!

On Sunday morning we explored Table Rock Lake for a little bit and then continued south along US-65 into Arkansas. I already had Arkansas on my states visited list, but Kim did not so we decided to make the trip. Our route took us through Eureka Springs, a little town nestled in the Ozark Mountains. We took a detour around the winding streets of the town and even visited the Christ Of The Ozarks statue.

From there we continued west on US-62 to Bentonville where we had lunch. I decided that we should eat at Zaxby’s after reading some online reviews. It was definitely a good stop as this restaurant easily rivals Chick-fil-A in the fast food chicken department. Zaxby’s takes a little longer to prepare the food, but the wait was well worth it.

Once lunch was over we continued the drive north on US-71 back to Kansas City. For the first time in awhile, the upcoming move was the last thing on our minds.

Eureka Springs on Dwellable